


If You Stare At The Stars

by liddylids



Series: Eyes One Shots [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, One Shot, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 19:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21081692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liddylids/pseuds/liddylids
Summary: You’ll stay there.





	If You Stare At The Stars

The rain mixes in with the dirt recently surfaced from an explosion and make a thick syrupy sludge. I poke at it, first with one of my deep brown boots, still scarlet splattered at the toe, it makes the dark murky water ripple almost slowly as if it is weighed down by the fact that it has collected in the footprint of a boot of a soldier who will never feel the water pattering down from the sky on his face and never hear tap-tap-tapping on the makeshift tin roofs again. Then having reached my hand around an ashy grey stick taken from the crumbling dirt walls, I poke at it with that instead. The ripple effect is almost instantaneous this time, it pours out of the footprint in almost a miniature wave, the water which gets more and more heavy with each drop has made sure that the little pool was far deeper than it should be, it splashes out over my boots and the ankles of my uniform, well worn, fairly damp and freckled with crimson and washes it all away.   
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The rain is in my eyes. The rain…  
  


*********************************************************************

  
It cannot be heard over the sound of explosions and the flying of bullets, In my red boots I walk past unmoving men, if you look at the wrong one, you can see his insides. Most of them are red, like their body’s have been stained with spilt jam or wine, for some bright red rubies pour from their mouths and throats, spilling out onto the cinnamon ground. I feel pleasantly warm though I am outside and it should not be so in November, as fires crackle all around me and soot sweeps through the sky, carried by a winter wind the sky begins to turn. Fighting is harder in the dark, it’s less easy to shoot a gun when you can’t see your targets and less easy to dodge bullets when they blend in with the greasy black night. The stars gaze down as the fight wears on, if they could really see us would they close their eyes? Out of respect for the dead, for our pain, for a pointless war that seems like it will never end? Or would they carry on gazing down in a sort of morbid curiosity, filled with anticipation over what would happen next?

I stare at them.

They stare back.

I pull my eyes to the ground and crouch down, a man is lying there, dirty blonde hair speckled with mud at the front and back and blood at both sides, with honey-coloured freckles and chocolate coloured eyes that seem to be staring out at the stars with tear tracked cheeks and... and he looks familiar but then again, everybody forming the carpet of bodies that covers the dirt floor does, he’s still warm and bleeding from a precise gunshot in the back of his head, it’s one too precise to have had it inflicted on him by someone else.

I don’t blame him.

I close his eyes.

Water splashes out of them.

We are both crying.

*********************************************************************

It taps out a lullaby on the caramely ground mixing in with the muck which grows more saturated by the minute and I feel more tired than I have in a long time, at first my roommate would keep me up when we had the time to sleep, then when I found him lying on the ground, bloody and trampled flat as a pancake, the thought of that would keep me up instead. I lie down and stare up at the sky, at the stars, though the place and people I once loved are long gone and the trench grows emptier by the hour, right now I don’t feel alone. Someone screams in the distance and the sky seems to grow brighter. If I went to sleep right now, would I wake up in the morning? Would I wake up at all? Maybe I would open my eyes to see the base camps hospital, maybe I would open my eyes and see nothing at all, maybe I would open my eyes and see the stars. My fingers clench around my gun and next, almost automatically it seems, I bring the barrel of it to the side of my head. The bang of the gun is deafening, drowning out the thunderous rain.

I stare at the stars.

The rain pools in my open eyes.

*********************************************************************

  
The sirens bring me back. It’s time to go out and fight again. I climb up and out, hauling my body over the collapsing walls of the trenches. Wet, cold and tired I hold my gun ready to fight a never-ending battle. I look up at the sky, rain still pouring down from it and as red as the battlefield itself has come to be. I wish I could stay here, not having to go and fight, not having to worry about getting sick from the rain or dying from the flying bullets. I force my eyes forwards and head out towards the battlefield. I have already lost.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey you guys!
> 
> I’ve written some one shots lately so I’m gonna be uploading them. If you didn’t get the plot of this one, a guy is forced into a bloody and all consuming war, he is waiting in the trenches when he flashes forward to a battle, he finds a oddly familiar man who died from suicide whose eyes he closes, he then kills himself, it then flashes back to him in the trenches when he goes into battle. In case it’s not clear the dead man whose eyes he closes is himself. The * signs indicate when he flashes back and forwards 
> 
> Thanks for reading Xxx


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